Stage 2 guidelines for reading: Discourse

Here are some discourse objectives for Stage 2 for reading:

• To use grammatical and lexical references to appropriately track and refer to people and objects
• To recognize which parts of the discourse are most prominent and which parts are supporting materials
• To read the following kinds of discourses: procedural discourses, narratives, descriptions, personal and simple business letters, and straightforward newspaper and magazine articles

Here are some discourse strategies for Stage 2 guidelines for reading:

• Analysis

  Use text analysis techniques to identify the ways mother-tongue writers handle cohesion and prominence in discourse.

• Inference

  Use top-down processing to infer what different parts of the discourse mean from what you know about the whole.

• Exposure

  Read lots of material you can understand to help you subconsciously recognize the discourse devices used by writers.

Here are some discourse techniques for Stage 2 guidelines for reading:

• The Familiar Stories technique
• The Bilingual Reading technique
• The Text Portfolio technique
• The Shared Experiences technique
• The Text Analysis technique
• The Picture Descriptions technique
• The Series technique

Here is a discourse activity for Stage 2 guidelines for reading:

Read for pleasure, but try to choose a variety of genres.

• Generic module: Stage 2 guidelines for reading: Discourse
• In overview module: Stage 2: Reading modules
• In modular book: Guidelines for a Language and Culture Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In document collection: Other Resources
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 8 December 1998

© 1999 SIL International